the personal journal of Brent Stewart
This is book two of the series that my youngest son suggested that started with Scythe. This series is about a future where humanity is effectively immortal, with some level of active culling being the only way to balance population growth. I thought the first book was an interesting way to consider the value of life and the way that different people value life.
Although the core topic is grusome - the central character is essentially a sanctioned mass murderer - it felt like it was continueing a thread in science fiction that examined this topic. The obvious antecedent is Logan’s Run. The original Star Trek covered this in A Taste of Armegeddon. And of course, Piers Anthony personified death in his novel On a Pale Horse.
I think my original license for this wore thin about half-way through this second book, and I started to find the gratuitousness jarring. I actually set the book down and started in on a treatise on The Art of War for a while, but circled back to finish it off. The writing is good and the plot improved, but I need to see how Shusterman lands this plane to understand if the second book is worthwhile. If a parent is reading, I would not recommend this series to elementary aged kids and I’d suggest you check back before suggesting teenages read it.
In keeping with my practice for fiction, I’m not going to give a detailed review of the book. I’m just going to answer two questions:
At the half-way point the answer was “no”. I stuck around, partly out of respect to my son, and the second half got us back to “eh”. Part of this is that death is a much larger figure in my fifties then it will be to a teenager. Part of my reaction is also struggling to understand what my faith has to say about it. Kudos to Shusterman to raising the questions, but Andres Serrano proved that art that raises questions is sometimes just an excuse for a tormenter to get away with pushing buttons. So I’ll read the third - might take a break before I do - but I’m ambivalent at this point on the series.
Shusterman is an excellent author. Asimov had a saying about young adult books being the same as adult, with a slightly restricted vocabulary, and I think Shusterman has a similar respect for the intelligence of his readers. Further, the plotting fo the books is well done and propels the story forward. This internal propulsion is necessary because these are long stories (both in terms of page count and in the number of events described in the books).
We’ll see, but not yet. Read my review of book 3. I’ve started reading and - so far - am hopeful.